George Mostow is an American mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

, a member of the National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

, Henry Ford II (emeritus) Professor of Mathematics at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, the 49th President of the American Mathematical Society

American Mathematical Society

The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...

 (1987–1988),
and former Trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study

Institute for Advanced Study

The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...

 in Princeton, NJ, who is renowned for his contributions to Lie theory

Lie theory

Lie theory is an area of mathematics, developed initially by Sophus Lie.Early expressions of Lie theory are found in books composed by Lie with Friedrich Engel and Georg Scheffers from 1888 to 1896....

. In 1993 he was awarded the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research. The rigidity phenomenon for lattice

Lattice (group)

In mathematics, especially in geometry and group theory, a lattice in Rn is a discrete subgroup of Rn which spans the real vector space Rn. Every lattice in Rn can be generated from a basis for the vector space by forming all linear combinations with integer coefficients...

s in Lie group

Lie group

In mathematics, a Lie group is a group which is also a differentiable manifold, with the property that the group operations are compatible with the smooth structure...

s he discovered and explored is known as Mostow rigidity. His work on rigidity played an essential role in the work of three Fields medalists, namely Grigori Margulis, William Thurston

William Thurston

William Paul Thurston is an American mathematician. He is a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology. In 1982, he was awarded the Fields Medal for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds...

, and Grigori Perelman

Grigori Perelman

Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman is a Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology.In 1992, Perelman proved the soul conjecture. In 2002, he proved Thurston's geometrization conjecture...

.

Short biography

George (Dan) Mostow was born in 1923. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in 1948. His principal academic appointments had been at Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 from 1952 to 1961 and at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 from 1961 until his retirement in 1999. Mostow was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974, served as the President of the American Mathematical Society in 1987 and 1988, and was awarded the AMS Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research in 1993 for his book Strong rigidity of locally symmetric spaces (1973).

See also

• Strong rigidity
• Superrigidity
  Superrigidity
  In mathematics, in the theory of discrete groups, superrigidity is a concept designed to show how a linear representation ρ of a discrete group Γ inside an algebraic group G can, under some circumstances, be as good as a representation of G itself...
  
  
• Mostow decomposition
• Hochschild-Mostow Functor
• Margulis arithmeticity
• Hochschild–Mostow group

External links

• AMS Presidents: A Timeline at the American Mathematical Society
  American Mathematical Society
  The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
  
  website.